1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to composite barrels for weapons, such as rifles and automatic or semi-automatic weapons.
2. Related Art
Light-weight, high-strength composite barrels have been developed with a carbon fiber wrap over a steel barrel liner. For example, see U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,804,756; 5,657,568; 5,692,334; 5,915,937; and 6,889,464.
Such barrels, however, face difficulties when incorporated into an automatic weapon. For example, barrel temperatures in automatic weapons can exceed the melting point of the composite or epoxy resin thereof As another example, some automatic weapons utilize gas-operated reloading in which high pressure gas from the fired cartridge is utilized to power a mechanism to expel the spent case and load a new cartridge. The high pressure gas is taken from a gas port in the barrel downstream of the chamber. The high temperature gas can degrade and/or melt the composite or epoxy resin around the gas port. Simply wrapping the composite around a tube from the gas port has been found to sheer the tube as the liner and composite wrap have different coefficients of thermal expansion.